The Naturalist's Handbook

As a botanical and zoological artist, Alfred Swift is fascinated by the natural world. Growing up in rural, early 19th century Holland, he was a quiet child, often alone with his sketchbook or dissecting plant and fruit specimens through a magnifying glass. Now a young scholar, Alfred works as a researcher for the University close to his home. His quiet daily life consists of cataloguing and categorising small insect species and illustrating taxidermied creatures for the university’s historical zoological records. He is diligent and efficient, enjoying total control over his subject matter, thriving in the orderly systems and routines he has created. However, on June 26th, 1839, Alfred’s life is thrown in a very different direction.

Magnus Finch, the University’s most esteemed explorer and researcher has, unfortunately, been eaten by a bear during his travels through North America. The details are very vague, and much to Alfred’s bemusement, nobody seems particularly interested to clarify them. It appears the only concern of the University is that the southern states have not yet been catalogued, and as the only other researcher in the department, Alfred is soon swept onto a ship and sent on his way.

Two months later and following a long and arduous journey over sea and land, Alfred finds himself in rural Alabama where he is to begin his studies. Accustomed to his usual organised workspace and stationary subjects, he is understandably alarmed when his first drawing of a fruit tree is rudely interrupted by a sounder of wild boar stampeding through the copse. Likewise, as he attempts to fill his flask from a nearby stream, he is confronted by an angry deer, or when leaping in the fields with his butterfly net, a hawk takes a fancy to his precious catch. These were just the first of many precarious encounters; his primary lessons in the beauty, power and danger found in the wilderness.

Alfred learns many truths fast in this challenging environment, but his quiet and submissive nature serves him well. The situations he faces teach him to blend in with his surroundings, to mirror the behaviour of his subject or occasionally (more often than he would care to admit), to just play dead. He faces cougars in Tennessee, Alligators in Louisiana and a herd of wild horses in Texas. He is astounded daily by his discoveries, and little by little, his bookish knowledge and wavering self-confidence begin to balance each other out.

Over the next 4 years, Alfred travels alone on foot through several states, and catalogues the species he encounters as best he can. He discovers rare and exotic fruits, brushes with death on several occasions, and comes face to face with magnificent and ferocious beasts. Here, we are lucky enough to read excerpts and view sketches from his handbook, compiled throughout his great adventure.

Alfred is offered a return voyage home at the end of his expedition, but on arriving at the port, he tightly binds his handbooks, wrapping them in a parchment addressed to the head of his faculty, before tossing them into the hands of the crew and striding assertively away from the ship. His journey is not over yet.